1
Phone first
Charlie asks about pressure loss, meter movement and what you can see or hear. For a Long Melford house he also asks when the last extension or refit happened, because that is often where the fault is.
Leak detection in Long Melford
Charlie traces water and heating leaks in Long Melford through old floors and thick walls without taking anything apart.
No find, no fee
24 to 48 hour bookings
Insurance ready written report
Tell us what you have noticed and where. We ring you back to talk it through. No find, no fee.
No find, no fee
24/7 enquiries
Non-invasive methods
Reports for insurance claims
Long Melford is one long street of Tudor and Georgian frontages, and behind most of them is a timber frame far older than the brick. The plots run back a long way, so kitchens, bathrooms and boilers have been added at the rear over the decades with pipework threaded through wherever it would go. A leak here is rarely where the damp appears.
Anglian Water looks after the main under the street. From the stop tap at your boundary the pipe is yours, and on a Long Melford plot it can run the full length of a courtyard before it reaches the house. Newer estates on the Sudbury side have heating laid in concrete floors instead, which brings its own problems.
1
Charlie asks about pressure loss, meter movement and what you can see or hear. For a Long Melford house he also asks when the last extension or refit happened, because that is often where the fault is.
2
A reading on the water meter with everything off, then a pressure test on the heating. One of them will show the loss, and that tells him which pipes to follow with the camera.
3
Thermal imaging finds the area, then acoustic listening or tracer gas finds the point. Charlie marks it, photographs it and writes up the readings before he leaves.
Old brick and lime plaster hold moisture in a pattern the camera reads straight off. A heating pipe shows as a warm line, a leak as a cold bloom around it, and no board is lifted.
Mains pressure water escaping underground is noisy to the right microphone. Our engineer listens along the supply pipe route through the courtyard and follows the sound to its loudest point.
For heating circuits buried in a solid floor, a safe gas mix is introduced to the drained pipework. It surfaces through the floor at the leak and a hand held detector finds it to within inches.
A house on the main street had damp appearing in a front room, while the leak was at the back, where a kitchen had been added and the heating pipe threaded through to reach it. The pressure test showed the loss and the thermal camera followed the warm line to a failed joint under the extension. A property with a courtyard had a supply pipe running its full length; with the stop tap closed the meter still moved, and the ground microphone found the leak under the flagstones near the house wall. On the newer side towards Sudbury a bungalow with heating in the concrete floor was losing pressure, and tracer gas marked the leak in the hall.
Sudbury is next door and Lavenham is a short run up the hill. Clare, Bury St Edmunds and Hadleigh are all within easy reach.
If your policy includes trace and access, the cost of locating the leak and of opening up and reinstating to repair it is normally claimable. The written report records the method, the readings, the thermal images and the precise position, which is what a claims handler needs.
A good share of what starts as a roof leak Long Melford call ends as a pipe under the landing. A thermal scan shows whether water is tracking down from above or spreading from a pipe, and a meter or pressure test settles it.
No. The point of the equipment is that nothing comes up. We locate the leak from the surface and marks the one spot a repairer would need to open, which keeps the work in a listed house small.
Most are done in 2 to 3 hours. A long supply pipe under a garden, or a large heating system over three floors, can take longer. We give you a realistic estimate on the phone once we know the house.
Enquiries are taken 24 hours a day and we book weekend visits when the diary allows. Long Melford is an easy add on to any day we are already out this way.
Both. The High Street has plenty of commercial premises with flats above and shared pipework, and the same methods work there. We can visit outside opening hours if that suits the business.
Call 07897 020 680 and we will give you the next free slot.
Landline 01440 840 772. Email hello@completeleakdetection.co.uk.